Favorite Players

There are best players and there are favorite players. Sometimes they are very much the same, and sometimes they are very different. There isn’t really a perfect formula for determining either, but somehow you always know the answer to both.

Sometimes, things change. Regardless, there are exactly three reasons why each player on this year’s team should be your favorite. Coincidentally, the reasons are here.

Two of his rookie year games versus teams that made it pretty far. 17 points and 18 rebounds against Heat on 11/21/12. And, 20 points and 9 rebounds (on 10-11 shooting) against Spurs on 1/5/13.

Ambidexterity. Henson is technically right-handed, and he shoots free throws right handed (for now, anyway). But his left is actually his dominant hand, and the one he uses to shoot those little hooks and do most everything else, including throwing a baseball and tossing a bowling ball.

The two-time ACC Defensive Player of the Year in college ranked a modest 48th in blocks per minute as a rookie. Yet in the final month of the regular season (April) in bigger minutes, his block rate would have ranked eighth best in the NBA (shhh).

Ersan Ilyasova

Made 29.8 % on three-pointers in 2010-11. Turned into the fourth best three-point shooter in the NBA (44.0 %) after that.

In form and personality, who else is there like this, today or in history? The threes, the offensive boards, the tip-ins, the aversion to posting up, the charges drawn, the career arc; it’s all very Ersan and no one else.

Brandon Knight

Starting point guard. Starting point guards always make good favorite players.

Named the Gatorade National Boys Basketball Player of the Year in high school… as a junior and a senior, while maintaining a 4.3 GPA (he also visited Yale before going to Kentucky).